Creating ‘Shang-Chi’ — Inside the Character Who Will Be Marvel’s First Asian Big Screen Superhero (Exclusive)

Inclusivity has increasingly become a major component of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, driven home by the dual-success of Black Panther and, now, Captain Marvel, which have respectively put black people and women front and center in superhero films and proven that, as far as the audience is concerned, both are long overdue. Add to this the triumph of Crazy Rich Asians — which admittedly doesn’t have a superhero anywhere — and it’s no surprise that Marvel is turning its character Shang-Chi into a feature film.

“About a year ago,” recalls writer Steve Englehart who, with artist Jim Starlin, created Shang-Chi in 1973, “I went to Marvel Studios as just a supplicant and said, ‘You know, Crazy Rich Asians looks like it’s going to do something and Black Panther just did something. You really ought to do Shang-Chi,’ and they were, like, ‘Yeah, we’ll get back to it.’ Now I have to say that Marvel is very good about acknowledging and being true to what we did in the comics, but I totally get it that if you’re going to do a movie, you want a screenwriter and not a comic book writer. Although I’m sure I could do it, they don’t look at it that way. But overall I would say their decision to turn Shang-Chi into a film has more to do with Black Panther than Crazy Rich Asians. Black Panther just set everybody back.”

Jared Siskin/Patrick McMullan via Getty Images

Now, Shang-Chi is in active development. The script is being written by David Callaham, who wrote The Expendables and is currently scripting the sequel to the animated Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. Directing is Daniel Cretton, whose credits include Short Term 12 (2013), The Glass Castle (2017) and the forthcoming Michael B. Jordan starrer, Just Mercy, scheduled for a 2020 release.

Who is Shang-Chi?

Marvel.com offers up the following description of the character’s background: “Shang-Chi is the son of an internationally-renowned and powerful criminal mastermind. His childhood was a lonely one, full of constant training in rigorous mental and martial arts and with only limited contact with his parents. Finally, the day had come. While still a teen, he was given his first mission outside the walls of his father’s retreat in Honan, China. He was to assassinate his father’s enemy. As he knew nothing but that his father was a great humanitarian and savior of mankind, Shang-Chi felt nothing short of unquestioning loyalty. He stole into his victim’s home in Mayfair, London, and delivered his killing strike! Almost immediately, he was confronted by another of his father’s enemies, Sir Denis Nayland Smith, who told Shang-Chi the truth about his father’s evil deeds. Shang-Chi’s mastery of kung-fu enabled him to escape, but he sought out his mother, who confessed the truth as well. Shang-Chi, finally aware of his father’s manipulations, declared himself to be his father’s mortal enemy, devoting his life to the overthrow of his criminal empire.”

Origin of the Master of Kung Fu

Anyone with a vague knowledge of Marvel Comics history pretty much believes that the creation of Shang-Chi — who was given the title the Master of Kung Fu — was designed to cash in on the Kung-Fu craze that took over America in the 1970s, helped in no small way by the arrival of the late Bruce Lee and, in particular, his film Enter the Dragon. “We actually predated that by about two months,” Steve differs. “We didn’t beat it by much, but I’ve read a couple of articles saying, ‘Oh, yeah, it’s all based on that,’ but, in fact, I was writing a bunch of characters in those times. One of them was Doctor Strange, who I had turned into a cosmic sorcerer. But that was the Western magic thing and I started thinking about Eastern philosophies. Right around that time, the Kung Fu television series debuted; originally there were, like, three episodes one month apart from each other, so it wasn’t like a deluge. But between those two concepts, I decided I wanted to do this Eastern character and the Kung Fu TV series certainly played a role in the martial arts aspect of the whole thing.

“So Jim Starlin and I went to Marvel,” he continues, “and said that we wanted to do this kind of character, but they said there would be no interest in it. We pushed and they said, ‘We’ll give you this obscure magazine,’ which was a comic called Special Marvel Edition. And the other thing is that when I read about Kung Fu, I had read that the original actor considered for the TV series was Bruce Lee, but ABC said, ‘No, you can’t have an all-Asian guy as your lead,’ and we very specifically had said that Shang-Chi was completely Asian. When Marvel said we could create the character, they said, ‘No, you can’t have an all-Asian guy.’ So he became half-white. And then they said the only Asian character that really interested people at the time was Fu Manchu, so we were going to make him the son of Fu Manchu.”

The Challenge of Fu Manchu

The character of supervillain Fu Manchu was actually created in 1913 by writer Sax Rohmer who, according to Wikipedia, came up with the concept in what is certainly a unique way: “Sax Rohmer, without any prior knowledge and understanding of Chinese culture, decided to start the Fu Manchu series after his Ouija board spelled out C-H-I-N-A-M-A-N when he asked what was the most dangerous competition to the white man. During the time period, the idea of the ‘Yellow Peril’ was spreading in North American society. Western people had feared that Chinese people would elevate drug hysteria while simultaneously work harder physically and graduate colleges at higher rates. The image of Orientals ‘invading’ Western nations became the foundation of Rohmer’s commercial success, being able to sell 20 million copies in his lifetime.” (You can’t make this stuff up.) Rohmer wrote a total of 13 novels featuring Fu Manchu by 1959 and there have been over a dozen films.

What this meant in terms of Shang-Chi is that Marvel would have to license the rights to Fu Manchu to be set up as the character’s father. Years later, when their license had lapsed, they no longer could use the character, which meant that they didn’t have the right to reprint any comic featuring him. “For a long time,” Steve points out, “Shang-Chi was this sort of legend. It was only about a year ago, probably because Marvel was thinking about getting this movie made, that they reprinted all of the Shang-Chi stuff for the first time in 40 years, which means they had to license the rights back for Fu Manchu for like a year so they could publish this stuff, and then they let it go again. I have no idea what they’re doing with the movie, but what I’ve read is that they’re going to make him the son of an Asian oligarch, but not Fu Manchu this time out.”

Things Were Not as Originally Envisioned

“The original impetus here was to do something pretty straightforward,” Steve explains. “I mean, this was supposed to be an Asian guy with an Asian philosophy. I’m not Asian, but I write a bunch of different characters and I knew I was going to do my best along those lines. Marvel is the one that added the whiteness and the Fu Manchu stuff. Again, I read articles now going, ‘There were a lot of stereotypes in the original comic.’ Well there were, but not from the people who created it. In any event, the book came out it was a bi-monthly title called Special Marvel Edition and extremely obscure. But when the book came out, it really sold well. The next issue two months later also sold well and right around that time is when the whole Kung Fu explosion happened. So we were, I guess, on a wave before we even knew there was a wave, but we certainly rode that wave and went out as it went on from there.”

Interestingly, once the Kung Fu wave did hit, suddenly Marvel was on board, introducing the title Sons of the Tiger (which featured an Asian character) and eventually made Shang-Chi Asian (looking more and more like Bruce Lee along the way, incidentally). “A decision made by the same editorial people who said there’s no interest in this,” he laughs.

Going to Chicago by Way of Cleveland

In the beginning, Steve admits he had a “vague” arc for the character of Shang-Chi but, as that was his normal approach to writing, he allowed himself to be taken along for the journey. He details, “I would start off with an idea like, ‘Oh, I think I want to go to Chicago this month,’ and then you do something that would require you to go to Cleveland and you go, ‘OK, then I guess we’re going to Cleveland’ and you’d adjust accordingly. But I never was one for saying we have to get to Chicago and therefore I have to change everything, screw up characterization and retcon and all that kind of stuff. I like to let things go, so I wanted to see this guy with this Eastern philosophy sort of dumped into the Western world and suddenly finding out that his father was an oligarch or an arch criminal, or whatever he might be. And then coming to terms with the idea that you’ve got this nice philosophy, but now you’re in the real world and how you hadn’t been in the real world before in the way the thing was set up. So, what does he learn? How does he cope? Once Fu Manchu got involved, there was obviously the super villainy and the international intrigue and all that stuff, which was nice to have, but my original idea was just to sort of have this fish out of water suddenly dumped into water and what what happens from there.”

Shang-Chi Attempted to Be the Superior Man

“He was very calm, but unbalanced,” Steve notes of the character. “He was a philosophical character who had martial arts skills and got thrown into this whirlwind of international intrigue and so forth. My attempt was to do a character who based his life on being the superior man; on becoming the viewer of the world and drawing lessons from it. The TV character from Kung Fu was calm, but he was also sort of looking for adventure all the time. My guy was not so much looking for adventure as much as he was caught up in it and was able to cope with it. It was more of the personal journey for him through an adventure landscape.”